The debate over increasing the minimum wages (are you willing to pay a few cents more for your Big Mac so a minimum wage worker can earn a little more money?) rages on, and perhaps in no single place is that debate raging more than on Fox News, where…SURPRISE!…they’re all steadfastly against it because it’s “punishes job creators” and whatnot.

Well, John Oliver has a problem with this, largely because fast food companies print money on the backs of minimum wage workers. (As Oliver points out, McDonald’s made $5.5 billion in profits last year.) So he playfully made a suggestion to America’s fast food workers in regards to what they should do if someone from Fox News places an order at an establishment in which they work.

“I’m not saying you should give them the special sauce,” Oliver said. “I’m just saying it’s pretty clear they deserve it.”

He was a little shaky in the first week, but he’s really made the show his own of late. His interviews have been exceptional, and I like how the style is slightly different than Stewarts in his monologues/opening scenes. With shows like Inside Amy Schumer, Drunk History, and to a lesser degree The Jeselnik Offensive airing prior to Stewart/Colbert, they could make a really great two-three hour comedy block if they added Oliver to the lineup after Colbert.

I’m really enjoying the added presence of standup ( or at least stand up comedians) on Tuesdays, and would love to see them expand that line into the whole week with more content.

I’m not defending Fox News or McDonald’s, which both suck in their own special ways, as does just about every other mass-marketed product–like, say, Comedy Central, or Five Guys.

HOWEVAH, it’s worth noting that McDonald’s Corp. makes its money on franchise fees and closed-system supplies to the actual small businesspeople (for the most part; there are exceptions owning hundreds of outlets) who put their life savings into owning the local McDonalds stores.

Even if Corp. told the franchisees to pay higher wages, Corp. earnings would be the same…the difference would come out of the pocket of the sweaty guy in the tie who has to run the fry machine today because Tyler and Taylor are still hung over.

To a point, but a lot of them get hurt when the little storefront McD’s open up within their designated trading area. A big part of the value of their franchise — and what they pay for — is geographic exclusivity. Also, the Dollar Menu actually loses money for the owners, but they can’t control what the national advertising offers even though they pay for it. Some franchised fast-food operators have actually brought lawsuits to try to limit the money-losing offers.

It’s not really a metric shit-ton, although that’s the easy narrative. More like they’re buying a job that pays well, but requires a ton of work and risk.

The problem isn’t the minimum wage. Working at McDonald’s for a low wages isn’t/ was never supposed to be a life-long career. These jobs were supposed to be entry-level positions where you get that “work experience” and “references” you put on the application for a better job. Unfortunately these better jobs for people without specialized skills have dried up in America, usually going overseas due to costs of labor. Honestly there’s no real difference between making a Big Mac and putting the door on Chevy Silverado, or assembling any part of any mass-produced factory item. Those were the jobs people who worked for the minimum wage used to be able to transition to. In making minimum wage jobs more appealing and more permanent, without addressing the lack of better opportunities, there’s a negative effect of further reducing entry-level jobs for those who have yet to get their first chance to work, which only hurts young people and the unskilled in lower economic classes.

@Catfish: No, simple economics demonstrates that if the price goes up by a certain amount, demand will decrease, which will mean — at some point — fewer jobs for people to make the burgers. You can’t predict precisely where the price will affect the demand, but there’s a point where it does.

So the solution is to ignore the poverty crisis then? There is no legitimatte argument against raising the minimum wage. $15 might be a bit steep, but $10 or $11 is an easy move, especially if phased in over a couple years.

Even if the number of jobs don’t shrink to cover the added costs of wages, the availability of these jobs will decrease for the people who would need them, who aren’t currently in the workforce. A reduction in turnover at the entry-level position due to higher pay, coupled with the lack of upward mobility to higher-paying, more traditionally permanent jobs, means that openings for new workers (young people for the most part) will be harder to come by. Basically entrenching people at the bottom floor of the workforce only serves to shut the door for those looking to get in and work their way up.

… When did “employers” become “job creators”? Look, if the service you provide is filling an existing demand, those jobs would exist in one form or another even if your company wasn’t there. And if the service you provide isn’t filling an existing demand, a better label would probably be “parasites”.

They’ve managed to put forward this idea that they are providing these jobs out of the goodness of their hearts. “I don’t really need to pay people to do stuff at my business so I can make money, but goldarn it, it’s just the right thing to do.”

@Billybob, the issue isn’t that the services don’t have value, its do they have value at $X. If you mandate a wage that exceeds the value of the service the company either goes away because people won’t pay the new price for the service (lost jobs), substitutes capital improvement for labor (4 fry cooks becomes 2 better paid fry cooks and cool new machine – lost jobs), or cheats (pays people under the table without paying SS, Medicare etc.)

some actual knowledge of economics going on here. Scary stuff for this site. Also not adhering to the rule that Fox must be attacked because its Fox. Roman Candle, Old Fat bald Chick Magnet and One More gun – good for you.

Fox must be attacked because it is a dishonest joke of a propaganda machine. And yes, msnbc is bad, but they dont flat out lie and create stories by having oreilly et al talk about something then have their news say “people are talking about this…” It is a sham and you probably know it but are just in denial.

MSNBC lies all teh time. Hell NBC is being sued for doctoring the Zimmerman 911 call. All network news is basically the voice of teh Democratic Party. Righties have one outlet. ONE. and it drives everyone nuts. I dont even watch Fox anymore because they arent conservative enough. Truth is the Republicsn today are about as liberal of the democrats of years ago. Now the democrats are basically as far Left a Lenin. and that is their mainstream.

If you think today’s Democratic Party — with a president pushing health care solutions cooked up by the Heritage Foundation and promoted by Bob Dole in the 1990s and a Congress that is demonstrably several degrees to the right of what it used to be — is not only more liberal than it used to be, but in fact “basically as far Left as Lenin” then you are, in fact, a fucking moron who deserves to be laughed at.

Otto – nice name calling. always makes a good argument. The health care plan is and always was a gateway to single payer health care, which is basically what England has. And its terrible and socialist. The Republicans, for being so scary right wing, have basically run democrats as there presidential nominees the last 2 elections and cannot get the balls to defund obamacare. And they basically capitualte with Obama eventually on everything. We had our conservative golden boy Rubio basically commit political suicide pushing immigration and we have Boehner who looks for excuses to capitulate An since we have a govt now that has the IRS harass political opponents and want lists of who has guns, and lie about military that we leave to die in places like Benghazi, the whole thing starts to look a little soviet.

It’s not single payer, though, is it? That’s what liberals like me wanted, and we didn’t get it. And even single payer is not the same thing as the national health service in the UK, which is even further to the left.

No, this is a system that unlike models in Canada and Western Europe, does not make the government the direct insurer and does not make the government the ones who operate hospitals and employ doctors and nurses as direct government employees.

Instead, it funnels massive amounts of paying customers into the private health care market, where private insurance companies will reap a ton of new paying customers who will be served by private doctors in largely private medical establishments.

If you think that this system — which again, was developed by the right wing Heritage Foundation in the 1980s and advocated by Senate Republicans in the 1990s as the conservative alternative to Clinton’s health care plan and then implemented in Massachusetts by the last presidential nominee — if you think all that is even within shouting distance of “socialism” then yes, you are a fucking moron.

I wanted single payer, which is not the same as wanting nationalized health care.

I know such distinctions are lost on you, given that your worldview seems to be of the FIRE BAD! level of sophistication, but words have actual meanings, and if you think Romneycare is socialism, you’re beyond hope.

Anyway, shouldn’t you be out on the streets complaining about our socialist firefighters? I mean, they used to be private businesses too, but then the mean old government came in and started running things, stifling the almighty hand of free enterprise. SOSHULISM!!1!1!

Otto – the country doesn’t even want obamacare. go calm down with a nice PBR. It is not like its ever going to successfully take effect anyway. Even without Republican “obstructionism” this thing is so poorly designed it will die quick. But how much of our economy will it destroy on the way? If it is so great why does the IRS want an exemption? why do the unions want exemptions? why does congress and staffers get exemptions? It is because this mess is just for us assholes who aren’t elites.

You should probably do some research instead of just spouting out whatever Rush Limbaugh tells you to. You’re really making the Right look like a bunch of blundering, babbling idiots (not that they have much trouble with that already).

Staffers werent covered and their bosses didnt want them to get raped by obamacare. thats why they got exemptions. The republicans were ok with everyone in govt having obamacare because if that is what the people have to deal with then the congressmen and their staffers should too. You should really do some research. You are making the left sound like a bunch of dismissive, low info jerkoffs. (not that they have much trouble with that already)

Yes, the Democratic Party is wholly responsible for the current state of Detroit. After all, they were the ones responsible for shutting down all those GM and Ford factories, right? I think we all remember the speech by Chrysler CEO Howard Dean when he said they’d need to file for Chapter 11 bankruptcy. Fucking Democrats.

Also: are you just really, really bad at moving the goalposts of a debate, or do you suffer from some form of ADHD? I’m impressed at how quickly you went from “Obama is as far left as Lenin” to “if you love nationalized health care so much, why don’t you gay-marry Detroit?”

Keep going. I’m looking forward to your reasoned explanations about how an army of underground CHUD-people run the Federal Reserve as part of a larger plot to ruin our precious bodily fluids.

The federal reserve CHUD people are bi partisan. I cant hang that on Dems alone. But Detroit was the result of Dem policy. Republicans have not been in charge for 50 years. Unions and White Flight killed Detroit. Are you just getting your talking points from Chris Matthews? Or do you get your info straight from Sharpton?

I am also guessing you think this is all phony too right: Benghazi, IRS, Solyndra, election fraud, voter intimidation. Please feel free to pick just one of these to harp on and ignore the rest. Go for whichever you believe to be low hanging fruit. I already know what side your on for all of this. Whatever side Big Brother tells you to be on.

If you take a look into history your side has created a hell of a lot of monsters and a few million murders. But these guys will get it right this time because they are so smart, right?

Benghazi: There were 13 embassy attacks under Bush. IRS: They were targeting liberal groups as well as the Tea Party groups. Election Fraud: An excuse to disenfranchise minority voters. Voter intimidation: Do you really believe that big bad Black Panther members were preventing people from voting?
And I don’t side with “Big Brother” at all. Obama has been incredibly disappointing. The AP wire tapping is unacceptable.
But I would love for some examples of those “millions” murdered by “monsters” on the Left.
If you don’t recall, the Bush Administration lied to the American people to propel us into Iraq, causing the loss of thousands of American soldiers.
And who’s the monster?

You do realize that Republicans currently control the investigative machinery of the U.S. government through control of the House? And that they’ve held extensive, exhaustive hearings on all of these issues and come up with nothing? Or wait — is Darrell Issa in on the giant conspiracy too?

All five of those are giant nothing burgers. The fact that you think there’s something big behind every one of them speaks volumes about how fucking far into the weeds you are. I mean, there’s a reason other people in this thread were invoking them to mock you.

Good luck stumbling through life being horribly uninformed and incredibly angry.

The fact that you think none of those 5 scandals mean anything means you are blind. And willfully so. And I cannot be mocked by liberals. I have too low a respect for liberals (progs, commies, whatev) for it to matter to me. Like shit throwing monkeys. You people have managed to knock off your own Jimmy Carter as worst pres ever.

And General Bluth – why the fuck should i care about Canada or any other country.? If they are so great, why waste time here trying to change this country into those countries? Canada also has basically no freedom of speech and they throw comedians in jail and fine them for offending people on stage. We should totally model ourselves after them.

Bluth – how about Lenin? stalin? Mao? Pol Pot? and the Big H of course. Your side also owns N Korea. I know some like to make like Hitler wasn’t left (national SOCIALIST) but even with him out thats a nice body count with those guys. Who are the big bad guys to come out of the Right? Pinochet? very debatable that he actually did more good than bad.

Im tapping out on this whole thread though now. bored with it and nobody is going to change my mind or any of yours. And that is fine. I do not know where you guys are at in your life, but I used to be liberal too. Managing a business, getting married, buying a house and just getting older changed all that. I have no actual problem with you or Otto or anyone else here. I hated Bush when he was in office and can acknowledge he was a bad president. Way too much Jesus, but this fucking guy in there now is just human garbage. I actually find some you funny when I lurked here. But seriously – this whole country is fucked. I hope this civil war comes already. Until then I will just go to work, pay my taxes and fund everything i hate.

Porthole: Well, the Canadian education system might have been worth looking into because it seems the American system has utterly failed you. You’re never going to get any respect in an argument about politics if you can’t even construct a grammatically correct sentence.

Yes, I must be blind. There is damning proof of impeachable offenses behind all five of those scandals, and I’m sure the House Republicans are just sitting on them, not bringing any formal charges and biding their time, just to draw out the suspense.

Benghazi was a tragedy, but not a scandal. An embassy was attacked and four people were killed. Under Bush’s watch, eleven embassies were attacked and 53 people were killed. None of them were scandals.

The IRS flap came about when low-level employees at a branch office were taksed with reviewing applications sent in by groups who were seeking tax-exempt status reserved for “social welfare” groups and claiming not to be political at all. So this branch looked for keywords that would suggest they deserved scrutiny as political groups, keywords that included “tea party” but also “progressive” and “liberal.”

Solyndra received a grant but later went belly up. Shit happens. That’s not a scandal, that’s called capitalism.

Voter fraud and election place intimidation are the greatest right-wing boogeymen of all time. The fact that you think something that doesn’t even exist is a massive scandal speaks volumes about you.

I know all of these are treated as Worse Than Watergate™ on the right-wing news sources you seem to take in without questioning, but they have been explored over and over again by the House and every single one has come up empty.

But please, keep screaming about them anyway. It’ll only accelerate the massive exodus from the Republican Party.

I can’t decide if this guy is a testimonial for undereducated talking point parroting, proof that bots have finally gotten better at following some basic grammar rules, or is just trying to perfect the art of trolling.

Obamacare is and will continue to have adverse effects to the economy.
All part time workers’ hours have been cut to 28 or below. 30 is now the FT mark and the majority of retailers and fast food chains have cut hours to 24-28 to ensure the FT standard is not hit.
Of the small amount of new jobs created, 65% were part time.
Obamacare is basically only acting as a hidden tax.

The real price of a Big Mac would go from about a buck and a half to over $5 if salaries for minimum wage employees were doubled. This is from the Huffington Post, which ran the initial story and has since corrected it.

Unless starting at $15/hr. causes the other side to conclude that you are not serious and decides not to negotiate with you. If that is really how negotiations work, why not start with $30/hr.? Then you’ll actually get the $15/hr. you are hoping for!

It’s certainly a fine line, and you’re right, one could certainly make that case and I’d listen.

But you could also make that by calling for such a large increase, they’ve at least managed to bring some mainstream attention to it, for better or worse. And I think it’s valuable to their cause to actually have people openly discussing it.

I’m all for raising the minimum wage, and for helping the McDonald’s workers get a raise. Doubling it isn’t going to happen, but I’m sure they’ll compromise.

However, to pretend that large-scale low-skill immigration hasn’t depressed low-wage earners is fantasy. When you have massive competition for jobs that will do the work for much less (sometimes less than minimum wage off the record), it’s going to have an huge and devastating effect.

CEOs don’t mind because it benefits them financially, and Democrats don’t mind because most of the new arrivals vote Democrat. And the Republicans are too stuck in the economic ideology of the 70s to realize the game has changed (not to mention many of their huge donors are the CEOs benefitting for the current system).

Now we have a huge percentage of able-bodied adults who have dropped out of the workforce and rising income inequality. And we wonder why.

Is anyone at this site going to write about Colin Quinn’s hillarious appearance on the daily show last night or about his new one man show “Unconstitutional” currently playing in NYC and about to go on tour with it? Unconstitutional is hysterical by the way, I highly reccomend everyone go see it!

I tried to like Quinn, but his seeming inability to make it through a complete sentence always got in the way. The jokes he tried to make were pretty funny, but it was like his mouth wouldn’t let him land them.

Yeah, Quinn always struck me as someone who killed in the writers’ room but stumbled on stage. His SNL Weekend Update run was always like that — the jokes were solid, but he flubbed his way through them too quickly.

I used to watch Tough Crowd, and so many times he would attempt a joke longer than 6 words, get tongue-tied and then just trail off. Then an uncomfortable silence from the panel until the (merciful) commercial break.

Yeah tough crowd with Colin Quinn (many episodes appear on YouTube, there must be at least 250 during its run). The greatest stand ups of the day in one room comedically discussing current events. It was like “The Wire” but for comedic discourse

Unfortunately I find that happens a lot with some writers. The delivery just isn’t up to the joke. Most of the time the joke is good enough to survive the excessive pauses and that accounts for at least 60% of CQ’s material. Still, the other 40% gets awkward. The guy who does Totally Biased has a similar problem but he doesn’t stumble over the lines nearly as much.

Global warming is fake. The data was all doctored. and this has been debunked going back to the Hockey Stick graph that started this whole “craze.” Just another excuse for the government to heap regulations on us and keep control. The Carbon Tax is a bullshit scheme. Al Gore has the largest carbon footprint in America coming off of his Tennessee estate as well.

@Catfish Dude, there will be plenty of global warming threads where you can be on the offensive. Raising the minimum wage will have a negative impact on employment as employers substitute to capital and marginal customers reduce their demand for services because they don’t value them at the higher price. This isn’t good or right or fair, but it is real.

Our minimum wage has been shrinking for decades. And the economy has not been on a steady uphill climb. Many states and municipalities have higher minimum wages, and they are doing fine. I absolutely agree that at some point it is too high, but to suggest ANY raise will have a negative impact is just false. Will $15 be too much? Probably! But $9-11 is a fair and reasonable middle ground that will probably have very little negative impact and a MASSIVE positive impact. Poor people spend all their money. Rich people save it.

And by “mountains of science” you of course mean that: (i) global warming zealots have no explanation for the medieval warming period, (ii) we have only 130 years of temperature records, (iii) we have had 15 years of no warming whatsoever (contra to all of the so-called irrefutable models from 15 years ago), and (iv) that the hockey stick has been proven fraudulent.

When did this website become the Huffington Post? There seems to be more and more petty nonsense about FOXnews, and headlines now include words like “adorable,” “delightful,” and “wonderful.” I live in Southern California and have to listen to whiney liberal pansies all day. I used to come to Warming Glow for two reasons: Alison Brie GIFs and Corgi Friday. Logic dictates that when you took away the Corgis, you should have compensated with more boobs. Instead we get useless commentary about minimum wage and the proper use of the N-word. Thanks, and (fartnoise).

Actually no, that “97%” (assuming that’s accurate, which it isn’t) only “believe” that man-made global warming is real. They cannot *prove* it, as evidenced by the models on which such “belief” is based having not come true over the past 10-15 years. Scientific fact is not something that can be determined by consensus, regardless of how robust such consensus is currently. And, not for nothing, but that “97%” decreases every year as the foundation of it continues to erode.

I just stopped by to say this site keeps getting bizarrely more political for no reason, if you really want to have a turgid discussion about categorical imperatives, go read slate. I also want you all to realize that you’re all part of the problem, and that right now, as we speak, I don’t have any pants on.

I’m forced to agree, this one post brought Conservatives who hate the Daily Show, Liberals who love the Daily Show, and apathetic “Conservative if it’s about guns money and tits” types like me. Sadly getting multiple groups who are pissed off at each other on the same blog is still a solid strategy for making money on the Internet.

Its how he defends Islam. Not directly, but by just mugging for the camera with his mocking bullshit whenever anyone criticizes it. I do not really understand how a jew does this. And I am a jew.(atheist)

Well to really get the full range of Conservative Tit opinion you need to look beyond the Religious Right and move into the more fiscally conservative Laissez Faire Cap-tit-alism of the late 80s. After the Vietnam-era Bra Burnings, America’s tits were on the down swing. All of the large, natural American breasts were unsupported or bogged down in Kennedy/Johnson red tape that made it hard for them to compete with smaller, more nimble asian breasts.

But seriously, to answer your question, since like 1997, the people who I hear shouting the loudest about dirty sex on tv and filthy pictures are the vegan feminist types who earned a lot of money and now want to make the world a more harmonious place. I lived in California for two years, one day I’ll maybe move back. While I was there I worked on a couple of soft core porn sets and then showed a bunch of my friends my imdb profile, which now listed me as a craft PA on Bikini Time Machine (*ahem* [www.imdb.com])

Than an interesting thing happened. The most religious person I knew sighed and said he’d pray for me but still hung out with me. the two most Republican guys I know gave me a high five for all of the breasts I saw. But every time I went to a party that had a lot of really hippie dippy types? I occascianally got a face full of shit about objectifying women. I realize some of that is California, the people in that state never met a hypo they could hypocrisy, but it made me realize that people who say they’re sexually open usually have a line somewhere, just in a different place. While I don’t like arm twisting bible beaters, I at least respect them if they walk the walk, y’know? Don’t tell me you’re cool with something and then brush me off if I cross a line I didn’t know was there.

I might also throw out the idea that liberal pursuit of total empathy means an awful lot of shutting down tricky topics regarding in the hopes nobody gets offended. I’m not saying the Right is clean, I just suffer religious assholes better than left hypocrites. That’s not indicicative of everybody, I’m not throwing around accusations… This is just my perspective.

Stewart comes back for the rest of the year, Oliver reprises his role on Community and becomes a regular, Letterman retires, Stewart takes over for Letterman, Oliver takes over the DS desk permanently.

It really is like Wingnut Bingo with this guy. I’m still not sure if he’s a troll. I mean, honestly, a corporate-friendly centrist like Obama is to the left of Lenin?

Obama relies on Heritage Foundation market-based proposals for handling health care and climate change (cap and trade), surrounds himself with Wall Street types like Tim Geithner and Larry Fucking Summers, and begins every negotiation with the GOP by meeting them halfway and then moving closer. Under his watch, the stock market has more than doubled, corporate profits are at an all time high (after a 177% increase on his watch!) while corporate taxes are at one of their lowest points in the past thirty years.

Seriously though, The Dirty Porthole is very possibly a liberal troll. Its not like the barrier to entry to create and account is high and he does act like a person know gets most of their impressions of non-liberals from MSNBC and Mother Jones.

Damn, saw this tread too late, so I do a double post:
I can’t decide if The Dirty Porthole is a testimonial for undereducated talking point parroting, proof that bots have finally gotten better at following some basic grammar rules, or is just trying to perfect the art of trolling.

Otto, the stock market is only rising because they are pumping unfunded money into it and artificially keeping the interest rates low. He’s killed the bond markets. China is doing the same economy hacking, just to their GDP with pumping up unneeded new construction.

Let’s take an extreme example: You have a McDonald’s that raises everyone’s wage by $2.50 an hour, with ten people working every hour, 24 hours a day. That adds up to a whopping $600 a day. Which sounds like a lot. Except for the average McDonald’s does tens of thousands of dollars of revenue every single day, and the McDonald’s I described is far from average.

Either way, that $600 is not the difference between the store being profitable and not. It’s just $600 that isn’t going to the owner (which, once you consider the income tax and the relative value of money, is actually less valuable in his possession). You don’t have to raise prices, the owner just has to make less.

EVEN IF you did raise prices, that’s 60,000 cents. A McDonald’s of the size I described probably sells between 30,000 and 60,000 items in a given day. Even if it only did 10,000 items a day, that would still only be a 6 cent raise per item.

Exactly. You only have to scale the prices with the wages if you want the profit line to stay the same Since McDonald’s profit line is $5.5 BILLION friggin’ dollars, that’s a pretty fat profit line that you don’t have to worry about exhausting.

Someone farther up the chain mentioned that most of Mickey D’s corporate profits come from franchising. Which is probably correct, but even if it is, that shouldn’t matter. The corporate take is probably a percentage of the store earnings, so, again, there’s no reason for prices to go up because the payment will decrease with the earnings. If the franchise fee is a solid number, then the smart thing for McDonald’s to do would be to drop their fee accordingly. If a store closes because the owner could no longer afford it, then that’s just that much more money that McDonald’s loses out on.

Benghazi is a scandal. There was a cover up pre election to help Obama secure the Presidency. The real story is that the CIA was either smuggling guns to Libyan rebels for their revolution or the more popular theory, buying back weapons they gave the rebels who ended up being Al Qaeda members.

The article sites CNN’s report from last week about CIA operatives being on the ground in Libya.

Why is there no outrage that these barbarians killed a homosexual man then sodomized his body? Is it because we don’t expect much from Middle Eastern countries or because we can’t judge? Most people who comment in this thread will blame America for any violence in the Middle East.
You should never mess with Libyans. Just ask Doc Brown.